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Liberals Love Trump—When He Embraces Military Intervention

It is no secret that Democratic Party leaders and their
ideological allies in the media loathe Donald Trump, some even
stating explicitly that he is “unfit” to be president.
Allegations include that he is a racist who excuses the behavior of white nationalists, that he harbors dictatorial impulses, and that he and his campaign
organization collaborated with the Russian government to
steal the 2016 presidential election. Progressives have almost
nothing good to say about the man or his policies—with one
very big exception. When he embraces the kind of military
interventions that typified previous administrations, even
outspoken figures on the left tend to mute their hostility and
praise Trump for being “presidential.” That belligerent
foreign-policy initiatives are the one thing that warms liberal
hearts says volumes about the sorry state of the current political
left regarding issues of war and peace.

Progressives were especially enthusiastic about two Trump
administration actions: the cruise-missile strikes against Syria in
response to the Assad regime’s alleged use of chemical
weapons, and the president’s decision to continue and
intensify the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. Some of the
compliments admittedly had a backhanded quality about them. New
York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stated that
“President Trump’s attack on Syria was of
“dubious legality,” as well as being both
“hypocritical” and “impulsive.”
Nevertheless, he concluded that Trump “was right” to order the strikes. Former
Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.) admonished her fellow liberals: “We have
to depersonalize this. Some people don’t like Trump, so
they’re upset that he did this.” But “if a policy
is right, congratulate those who are carrying it out.”

Commander-in-Chief is
“presidential” only when he’s dropping bombs.

Others were less restrained in their support of Trump’s
hawkishness. John Kerry stated that he was “absolutely supportive” of the Syria raid.
Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis nearly gushed with enthusiasm following that coercive
action. “This seemed like a very different Donald Trump. More
serious—and clearly moved emotionally.” Fareed Zakaria,
the host of CNN’s program “Global Public Square,”
concluded that “President Trump
recognized that the President of the United States does have to act
to enforce international norms, does have to have this broader
moral and political purpose….I think there has been an
interesting morphing and education of Donald Trump.” Indeed,
he “became President of the United States last
night.”

Left-of center endorsements of the president’s decision to
continue the 16-year-old mission in Afghanistan seemed even more
widespread and supportive. CNN White House correspondent Maggie
Haberman underscored Trump’s comment in his television
address to the nation that “we are not nation-building again.
We are killing terrorists.” She concluded not only that it was “one of his more
forceful, best lines of [the] address,” but that Trump
“gave his best speech as POTUS.” In an echo of the
thesis Zakaria expressed following the Syria episode that Trump had
grown in office, Daily Beast correspondent Sam Stein
coauthored an article observing that “in a rare bit of
self-reflection, Trump explained that the reason he changed his
tune on Afghanistan was precisely because of the weight of his
office.”

The receptivity of liberals to Trump’s hawkish moments
reflects a deeper problem with the political left that has been
building for years. Long gone are the days during the Vietnam War
when liberals were much more inclined than conservatives to oppose
military adventurism. Support for George W. Bush’s war in
Iraq was truly bipartisan, with an abundant number of Democrats
crossing the aisle and voting for the resolution approving that
mission. Indeed, during the previous decade, liberals were among
the most enthusiastic proponents of the Clinton
administration’s “humanitarian” wars in Bosnia
and Kosovo.

When Barack Obama escalated the U.S. military involvement in
Afghanistan and orchestrated a NATO assault to remove Libya’s
Muammar Qaddafi from power, the criticism was sparse. Except for a
few hard-left organizations, such as Code Pink, the sounds coming
from the usual supposed anti-war liberal quarters were those of
crickets. Likewise, with the exception of a few principled
progressive Democrats like Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii),
there was little push-back to Obama’s gradual restoration of
a U.S. military presence in Iraq or his military meddling in
Syria.

Even the much-touted Bernie Sanders failed to live up to hopes
that he would embrace a consistent anti-war position. Foreign
policy in general, and opposition to Washington’s elective
wars in particular, became a secondary and anemic theme in his
campaign against Hillary Clinton. His milquetoast behavior has
become more pronounced since then. Just days after Donald
Trump’s upset victory, Sanders penned a high-profile article in the New York
Times outlining the policy agenda for progressives going
forward. The piece contained the usual laundry list of identity
politics and spending proposals that left-wing types have been
pushing for decades. What was striking, though, is that the article
contained not a word—not a single word—about
the need for a more restrained, peaceful foreign policy.

In fairness, Sanders has recently taken a hard line against
Washington’s backing of Saudi Arabia—especially
Riyadh’s atrocity-filled war of aggression in Yemen.
Nevertheless, there are few signs that he has emerged as an
outspoken, reliable opponent of U.S. foreign policy militarism. His
track record, including his support for Bill Clinton’s
“humanitarian” wars in the Balkans, suggests that he
will be, at best, an inconsistent critic of Washington’s
adventurism.

Many of today’s progressives, though, are far worse. They
seem nearly as susceptible to blood lust as the most hawkish
neoconservatives. Consider the comments of MSNBC host (and former anchor of
the Nightly News on the main NBC network) Brian Williams in
response to the missile strikes on Syria. “We see these
beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy
vessels in the eastern Mediterranean….I am tempted to quote the
great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our
weapons.’” Given that kind of sick militaristic
enthusiasm, it is no wonder that liberals have found their one
reason to like Donald Trump.